


Little Light

by tofansesmuna



Category: Fade to Black - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Fluff, Grocery Shopping, M/M, personality disorder???, this is so unnecessary ignore me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofansesmuna/pseuds/tofansesmuna
Summary: He doesn’t know why he keeps Eric around.





	Little Light

**Author's Note:**

> So this is for the 1980 movie Fade to Black starring Dennis Christopher. Don’t ask me why I wrote this. These characters have absolutely no chemistry in the movie. They would not be good for each other and frankly I wouldn’t want them together. Just for some reason the notion got in my head. OOC, but I had fun and isn’t that the most important part?

He doesn’t know why he keeps Eric around. 

Sure, the kid still has his job, but it hardly pays enough to make a dent in the expanding monthly budget. They’ve started making grocery lists (Marty’s never made a grocery list in his life) and whenever he’s not looking, Eric will add things onto the bottom. He’ll come back and find things like “twinkies” and “sour cream and onion Pringles” in Eric’s frantic scrawl. The kid likes to eat, but he can’t cook for shit. Can’t clean worth a damn, either. In fact, he does the exact opposite. Now the apartment is always littered with remnants of discarded snacks, and there are frequently dirty dishes sitting on the floor next to the couch. If Eric drops something in the kitchen, it’s gonna stay down there until Marty can steamroll it with a mop. And heaven forbid he do his own dishes. 

It’s kind of ridiculous, really. After 52 years of life not having to clean his house or do his laundry or cook his own meals, Marty Berger was now doing it for some 22 year old punk. And the punk he’s doing it for, too. Three months ago, he would have punted Eric a nice, long 500 yards into the lake if the kid so much as screwed up an order. Anyone else would have gotten the same treatment. But now he’s the help in his own home, while Eric Binford continues to be an absolute, utter waste of space, time, and money. 

However, after a period of interaction between them, a few redeeming qualities have managed to reveal themselves. First and foremost: sex. Fucking Eric is like having 24/7 access to an entire brothel. A few well placed movie quotes, calling him by a certain name, and the suggestion usually takes hold in his head. His favorite so far is Eve Arden, but there are bound to be more gems in the iceberg that was Eric’s movie repertoire. While the sex is fantastic, and certainly the main reason Marty puts up with him, another thought tends to creep around the back of all his frustration. It weaves itself through every deprecating comment and every snap of anger, even if he doesn’t like to think about it. 

In all honesty, it feels nice being able to protect something. Someone who doesn’t know enough about anything to not mess up once and awhile - or in Eric’s case, every five goddamn minutes. Someone who needs to rely on another person to survive. His wife hadn’t been like that. Hell, that’s why she had left him in the first place. They thought they’d continue to feed off of each other’s ambition, but in the end, she’d felt trapped and he’d held the lock. He hadn’t meant to, of course not, but each step she took upward had left him scrambling to keep her close. She had gotten tired of it, and decided she wanted out. She was much happier, and in a way he was, too. But he was also bitter and more than a little lonely. His heart palpitations increased, prompting his doctor to up his dosage, and his hours of steady sleep dropped drastically. Meanwhile she got the promotion she had been pining for, and had recently started seeing someone from her office. 

Eric, though: he’s about as ambitious as sedated lobster. He has no desire to advance, and it doesn’t seem as if he even has the faculties needed to do so. In a way, it’s a bit admirable: he doesn’t have a consuming itch to climb the ladder merely for the sake of being higher than someone else. There are things that he likes, and things that matter to him. And everything else doesn’t. Even so, he needs someone to provide, and Marty happened to be that someone. 

So yes, Eric is a waste of money. He takes up Marty’s time and is becoming an increasing invasion of space, but he’s not totally to blame. Because when Marty goes to the grocery store and sees Eric’s added items, he doesn’t ignore them. He sighs in frustration, and puts a box of twinkies into the cart. And when there are piles of candy wrappers sitting next to the couch, Marty just puts them in the trash. He’s actively enabling this kid’s irresponsible behavior for the most asinine reasons. Reasons like the quick shoulder massages he gets whenever Eric comes into his office. Or the fact that his doctor told him his heart is doing better than it has in years. The snarky wisecracks, the slow reaction speed, and the warm body lying next to him in bed that doesn’t move away when they think that he’s fallen asleep; little things that really don’t account for much in the grand scheme of things, but in the dilapidated world of Marty Berger, they mean a hell of a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading such controversial bullshit. I hope you have a lovely day.


End file.
